Chapter Seven
ARIS
The silence wakes me before the light does.
For hours, maybe an eternity, the world outside our nylon walls has been a screaming void of wind and ice.
The storm battered the tent with a violence that made the canvas snap like gunshots, a constant reminder that we were small, fragile things trespassing in a land that didn't care if we lived or died.
But now, the roaring has stopped.
I lie still in the warmth of my sleeping bag, blinking against the dim gray light filtering through the tent fabric.
The air inside is cold, sharp enough to sting my nose, but beneath the chill is another scent: woodsmoke, pine, and the distinct, warm smell of the man sleeping less than two feet away.
Nash.
I turn my head slowly, careful not to rustle the thermal material of my bag.
He's still asleep, one arm thrown over his head, his breathing deep and rhythmic.
In the heavy tactical gear and parka, he usually looks like an impenetrable wall of wilderness competence, the "Hollister Wilderness Logistics" expert the university hired to babysit the city scientist.
But here, in the quiet gray of dawn, he just looks … human.
His dark hair is messy, falling over his forehead, softening the hard angles of his face.
Stubble darkens his jaw, shadowing the scar I noticed yesterday near his chin, a thin white line that I'm inexplicably curious about.
His lips are parted slightly, and for the first time since I met him at the lodge, the guarded, assessing expression he wears like armor is gone.
He looks younger. Less like the adversary I've been fighting for a week, and more like the partner who taught me how to fish on a frozen creek, who fed me when I was failing, who looked at me last night by lantern light and told me that my dedication was real, not crazy.
Some things change the shape of you before you've decided to let them.
The thought drifts through my mind, unbidden and dangerous. I shut it down immediately, squeezing my eyes closed.
No. I am not doing this. I am Dr. Aris Thorne, an evolutionary biologist on a critical grant-funded expedition.
I am here to find a caribou bull named Waldo, document his migration anomalies, and prove that Thaddeus Brine's life work wasn't a waste of time.
I am not here to develop a crush on a hunting guide whose profession stands in direct opposition to everything I believe in, no matter how good he looks sleeping or how surprisingly tender he can be when I'm falling apart.
Proximity, I tell myself firmly. It's just forced proximity and the adrenaline of survival. It's a known psychological phenomenon. You bond with the people you survive with. It doesn't mean anything.
I sit up, shivering as the cold air hits my face, and the movement shifts the air mattress enough to wake him.
Nash comes awake instantly, no groggy transition from sleep to wakefulness. One moment he's out, the next his eyes are open, alert, scanning the space before locking onto me.
"Storm's broke," he says, his voice rough with sleep. It's a low rumble that vibrates in the small space, and my traitorous heart does a little skip that has absolutely no scientific basis.
"It's quiet," I whisper, as if speaking too loudly might bring the wind back.
He sits up, running a hand through his hair, and the sleeping bag falls to his waist. He slept in his thermal base layers, a dark gray Henley clinging to his chest and shoulders, which should be illegal in a professional working environment.
"We need to dig out," he says, all business now. "If the snow's as heavy as it sounded, the sleds'll be buried."
He reaches for his boots, effectively ending the strange, intimate moment of the morning. I let out the breath I've been holding and reach for my own gear.
Work, I remind myself. Focus on the work.
The world outside the tent has been erased and redrawn.
Where there were trees and ridges yesterday, there are now soft, undulating sculptures of white. The spruce grove that sheltered us is heavy with snow, branches bowed almost to the ground. The sky is a piercing, brilliant blue that hurts to look at, scrubbed clean by the violence of the night.
It's breathtaking. And terrifyingly vast.
"Two feet, maybe more in the drifts," Nash says, wading through the powder to where the snowmobiles are nothing more than humps in the landscape. "Ideally, this helps us."
"Helps us?" I adjust my snowshoes, grateful for the lesson he gave me on properly securing the bindings. My hands feel steady today, my body fueled by the fish and the stew, my mind sharp. "Won't it cover the tracks?"
"It covers the old tracks," Nash corrects, grabbing a shovel from the side of his pack.
He moves with that efficient, fluid grace that I'm trying very hard not to admire.
"But it means anything moving today is writing on a blank page.
If Waldo moved during the storm, and he probably did, to find cover, his trail will be the only thing out here. "
He tosses me a second shovel. "Start with the intake vents on the machines. I'll clear the sleds."
We work in tandem, a rhythm established over the last few days settling over us.
There's a satisfaction in the physical labor, in the clear, visible progress of uncovering our gear.
I watch Nash out of the corner of my eye as he digs.
He doesn't waste energy. Every scoop is deliberate, every movement calculated.
He treats his body like a tool, maintained and used like a tool that has to work tomorrow.
Thaddeus was brilliant, a mind like a diamond, sharp and multi-faceted, but he lived entirely in the abstract.
He couldn't change a tire, let alone survive a blizzard.
I loved him for his intellect, for his vision, but out here?
Out here, Nash's kind of intelligence, the knowledge of ice and wind, of leverage and endurance, is the only thing that matters.
"Ready?" Nash asks, stowing the shovel. He's watching me again with that look, half approval, half appetite.
"Ready."
We mount up, the engine's roar shattering the pristine silence. I wrap my arms around his waist automatically now, my body fitting against the solid wall of his back. It feels safer than it should, almost natural.
We ride for hours, cutting a fresh line through the virgin snow.
Every surface is blindingly bright, the sun striking sparks off the drifts.
Nash drives with an intensity I haven't seen before, standing on the running boards, leaning the machine to carve through deep powder, constantly scanning the tree lines.
I scan too, my binoculars pressed to my goggles. We're heading for the ridge line we identified on the map two days ago, the natural funnel point between the valley and the higher grazing grounds. If Waldo is moving, that's where he'll be.
Around noon, Nash slows the machine, banking hard toward a cluster of black spruce near a rocky outcrop. He kills the engine.
"What is it?" I ask, the sudden silence ringing in my ears.
"Ravens," he says, pointing a gloved hand toward the sky.
I look up. Two black shapes circle against the blue, their harsh calls echoing off the rocks.
"Scavengers?" A knot of dread tightens in my stomach. "Does that mean …"
"Doesn't mean death," Nash says quickly, sensing my fear. "Ravens are smart. They follow the herds because the herds kick up snow to get to the lichen. Ravens swoop in and grab the mice or bugs that get exposed. If the birds are circling, something is moving snow down there."
He climbs off the sled and grabs his pack. "We walk from here. Wind is in our face, so they won't smell us. If we take the machine closer, they'll hear it."
I follow him, stepping into his footprints to save energy. The snow is deep, but my legs feel strong. The weakness that plagued me earlier in the week is gone, replaced by a wire-taut anticipation.
We climb the ridge in silence, the only sound the crunch of our snowshoes and the rhythmic huff of our breath. Nash stops at the crest, dropping low to a crouch behind a screen of dwarf willow. He motions for me to join him.
I crawl up beside him, ignoring the cold seeping through my pants. We are shoulder to shoulder, close enough that I can see the individual snowflakes caught in the fur of his parka hood.
"Valley floor," he whispers, his voice a vibration I feel more than hear. "Eleven o'clock. By the frozen stream."
I raise my binoculars, my hands shaking slightly. I focus the lenses, scanning the white expanse.
Nothing. Just snow, trees, shadows.
"Look for the color difference," Nash murmurs, leaning closer. His hand comes up, pointing, and his arm brushes mine. "Caribou winter coats are lighter, almost white, but their legs are dark. Look for the vertical lines."
And then I see it.
Something moves. A ghost detaches itself from the tree line. Then another. And another.
A group of five animals moves slowly along the creek bed, their heads low as they shovel snow with their massive hooves to reach the vegetation beneath.
"Is it them?" Nash asks.
I hold my breath, adjusting the focus until the lead animal fills my view.
He's magnificent. Even from this distance, his size is imposing, a tank of an animal with a chest like a barrel and a neck thick with winter muscle. But it's the antlers that stop my heart.
They are massive, sweeping back and up in a chaotic, beautiful architecture of bone.
But the defining feature, the one Thaddeus noted in his field journals three years ago, the one I've memorized from grainy trail cam photos, is the left brow tine.
It's deformed, curving sharply downward like a hook instead of shoveling forward.
"The brow tine," I whisper, my voice choking. "The left one. It hooks down."
Nash raises his own binoculars. A long silence stretches between us, heavy with three years of searching.
"I see it," he says softly. "Distinctive hook. Heavy palmation on the right side."